their voices still
by altschmerz
Summary: Toby takes Josh to synagogue, and together they say the Mourner's Kaddish for Leo. "Because that's what Jewish sons do when their fathers die. Even if that father happened to be a Catholic." (ktavnukkah, day 4, "mourning", gen, season 7)


what they did with toby in the last couple seasons was completely ridiculous and i refuse to accept it Thanks That One's Mine Now. glad to see a lot of people agree with me. happy hanukkah guys!

this is so nerve wracking for me. i've never written/posted anything for the west wing so far and that show has been enormously important to me for a couple of years now. i literally have the words 'what's next?' tattooed inside my left wrist. i hope i did it justice.

* * *

Their voices still within this gorgeous commotion—

Crow call, water burbling, wind rough in trees—

In a weed's play, against skin, in the heart's vibrations.

Under the racket of this day's distractions

Under the birds' clamorous singing

Under lapping waves of noise

Their stopped tongues their stilled voices speaking.

Morning Voices, Ed Falco

* * *

The week has passed lethargically. Josh has been going as fast as he can, running all over kingdom come trying to prepare for the coming transition, to pull the fabric of business together tight enough to block out the empty space left behind where Leo used to be. It doesn't work, and the faster Josh goes the slower time seems to pass, the universe mocking his attempts to outrun reality. People keep telling him to slow down, telling him he's going to burn too bright too fast and burn right out, but he doesn't want to listen to them. He wants to explain that he slowed down long enough for a funeral and that alone just about did him in, never mind what will happen the next time the pace of his brain lets up enough for his heart to catch up.

No matter what he does, though, time crawls. Josh runs and scrambles and still when he looks at the clock it moves as though through molasses. The nights are the worst, after even the most dedicated of the others have retired to the dreamless sleep of the exhausted. Josh himself remains exhausted but not dreamless. In a moment of cliched turmoil, night after night he dreams of Leo. Nothing horrifying, nothing happy, just Leo. Standing in his office silently, looking at Josh and saying nothing at all.

Most of the time, in recent days, when he wakes up, it's to the scramble of people and files, instructions and phone calls before he has the chance to fully realize what day it is. It's nice, now, to have something to focus on immediately, to chase the phantom of Leo's memory away with the promise of a million things to do and only so many hours in which to do them.

Not this morning though. This morning, Josh wakes to a silent room, and pressure at the side of the mattress making it dip towards one side.

He blinks awake naturally for the first time in weeks, maybe months, and it's an alien sensation. Josh looks silently at the wall, watching the sickly light of the morning wash out the color of the already faded wallpaper, before he looks to his left to figure out what is pulling down the mattress.

Toby is reading a newspaper. He's sitting on top of the crumpled bedspread next to where Josh was sleeping only moments ago, dressed in a clean if obviously well-worn suit, complete with woolen overcoat, yarmulke positioned neatly on the top of his head. He glances to the side when he notices Josh is awake, but otherwise does not react, looking back to his newspaper with a quiet, expectant patience that is familiar enough to bring a pang of aching comfort to the core of Josh's chest.

Rolling completely onto his back, Josh levers himself up on one elbow, wiping sleep from his eyes with his other hand and frowning at Toby.

"It's Saturday," are his first hoarse words of the day, scratchy as his voice remembers how to talk. He moves right over the more obvious question of 'why are you here when last I checked you weren't even in this state', and goes for the less obvious, as he pieces together the when before the where. By the time he realizes they shouldn't be in the same room, should logic dictate circumstance, it's too late, and he's already picked a train of thought to focus on.

"Yes, it is," is Toby's calm, even reply.

"It's Saturday, why are you…" Josh waves a hand around the room, hoping the haphazardly aimed gesture says what his fuzzy brain can't express this soon after waking up. "It's the Sabbath."

"Yes," Toby says, still in that unperturbed voice. "It is. Which is why you're going to get up and get dressed - in something you didn't already wear this week, thank you."

Josh blinks. "Why? How'd you even- This is my hotel room, Toby, how'd you get in here?"

"Donna let me in through the adjoining door," is Toby's vaguely distracted answer, indicating the door in question with the newspaper, which he folds and sets aside, looking right at Josh. "I'm here to take you to shul-"

"Excuse me?" Now Josh sits up, mediocre hotel bedding pooling at his waist.

"-to say Kaddish. For Leo," Toby finishes, an answer that takes all the breath out of Josh, leaving him to gasp the question in an airless, wounded whine.

"What? Wh- What? _Why_?"

"Because that is what Jewish sons do, when their fathers die."

Toby's voice has a strange quality that Josh has only heard a handful of times before, painted most strongly in his memory in a hospital room after a bullet tore a path through his chest. It's a quiet voice, light and cautious, as if every word has been carved from the most fragile of stone, friable and so easily shattered with a wrong move, a careless bump. Toby is not meant to sound careful. He is meant to sound strong and brass, a warhammer voice with wrath and righteousness guiding its path. He is not meant to sound like he is placing words into a spun glass delicate conversation, breathing them out and watching with bruised-heart eyes while they drift down onto the floor. Toby speaks like one holds a newborn bird you know will only live moments, and it is razors through the raw, pulverized mess of Josh's heart.

"That is what Jewish sons do," Toby repeats, still so quiet, so careful, "when their fathers die. Even if that father happened to be a Catholic. If you don't want to go, I won't make you, but I know that's what you did when your dad died, and I know what Leo was to you. So I'm here to take you to shul to say Kaddish for him."

Josh's hand flies over his mouth and his shoulders slump swiftly downward. He stays there, statue still, for several long, agonizing moments until the freezing shards of jagged ice that have pierced through his lungs let up enough that he can breathe again. When he regains the ability to move, Josh nods. He looks up at Toby and nods, agreeing without saying a word. Toby nods too, fingers ghosting over the Josh's t-shirt clad shoulder.

"I've called ahead. They know who we are and why we're coming, and they're going to make sure we're left alone."

A woman meets them at the car, with a harried expression Toby recognizes of events coordinators at synagogues everywhere, and a delicate silver necklace shaped like a tree with a Hebrew letter at the base. She waves them inside through a door a ways away from the one the congregants are filing through, chatting and greeting one another, paying no attention to the trio entering a distance apart.

"We've put out an announcement, and Julie is having a word with everyone in the lobby real quick," the woman, Terry Erhart, explains as she walks down the hall, low heels clicking against the marble floor. She tells them that they have a small section of the sanctuary set aside for them to sit in, much like the area marked off for the family of the Bar Mitzvah boy. After she escorts them to where they are sitting, Terry leaves them be, walking briskly off to put out the next fire she is undoubtedly going to have to deal with that day.

Events coordinators at synagogues are to be respected and feared, Toby has decided. It's best to obey orders and stay out of the way.

The service gets started relatively quickly, and the sanctuary slowly fills with the eclectic assortment of people that make up the regular attendance of a Saturday morning synagogue service in a city congregation. True to Terry's assurance, nobody comes over to bother them, though there are several people who stare, with varying degrees of subtlety.

As the head Rabbi, a middle aged woman with red-toned brown hair just beginning to grey at the temples, begins the opening prayers, Josh doesn't process anything that's happening from that point on. He rises and sits when Toby does, guided by a light hand at his forearm, until the point he was both here for, and most anxiously dreading. The Rabbi announces the portion of the service dedicated to commemorating lost loved ones, and asks that those marking the recent passing or anniversary of a death to rise.

Josh feels a sick chasm open in his gut, and his knees turn weak and unstable. He knows this is his cue, this is what he came to do, but he doesn't know if he can. Somehow, against all odds, against everything that he feels surging and ebbing through him, Josh makes it to his feet. Toby stands beside him, and just when it seems like there's no way he'll be able to make it through this, Josh feels his friend's hand seize his, holding on tightly. Josh squeezes back just as hard, aware through a fog of sickness pulsing in his brain that he's probably hurting Toby just a little here, but to his credit, the older man doesn't flinch.

The rest of the congregation then rises, and the words of the Kaddish begin. For the life of him, Josh doesn't think he'll ever be able to explain how he makes it through the next couple of minutes. He's sure if it had not been for Toby there next to him he wouldn't have, and Josh will remember above the rest of it how Toby's shoulder had felt, solid and strong, arm curled around his with their hands clutched together between them. The most impressive part, through, is the prayer itself. Through a closing throat and heaving lungs, the words manage to make it out clearly and identifiably. Josh reads them out of the prayer book Toby holds open in front of both of them.

The book is steady save a few occasional tremors, and later that memory alone will dissolve Josh's strength, because it is a background truth to the whole endeavor that Leo had been Toby's family too. Toby had loved him too, Toby lost him too, and yet there he had stood, physically holding Josh up with his own strength. Josh will never ask Toby where he got that strength, but he will always remember it, will always feel unspeakably grateful for it, every year when the anniversary approaches.

When the Kaddish ends, Josh knows he won't make it through the rest of the service. He makes a move towards the doorway at the back of the sanctuary and Toby thankfully doesn't object, keeping hold of Josh's hand and walking beside him, supporting him as they leave quietly out the back, into a side hallway near the Rabbi's office.

It's something of a museum-like area, with art and old pieces of Judaica encased in polished glass. Metal plaques with words engraved in them describe the works in the cases, but it's the nondescript, worn wooden bench at the side of the hall that Josh and Toby gravitate towards. Josh barely makes it to the bench before his knees finally give out completely and he drops like a marionette whose strings were sliced with a razor. Toby goes down with him, and while the sounds of the concluding prayers ring out in the chorus of a hundred voices raised in harmony.

They sit there together, Josh's face jammed inelegantly against Toby's collarbone, Toby's hand curled over the back of his neck, holding him tightly as he gasps and fights for breath. It's a sound that would be sobbing, would be anguished weeping if it had the sheer air to be anything other than hollow, strangled choking. Toby doesn't say anything, doesn't try and convince him it's going to be alright, that things will get better. He merely remains what he has been the whole time, the rock of Gibraltar, a pillar of support Josh is afraid he may drown if he lets go of.

It's unclear how long they remain there, the polluted monster of Josh's grief attempting to snap his ribs and rip itself out of him. By the time his heaving chest slows, heartbeat calms to a regular thump rather than a screaming roar, most of the congregants have left, and they are alone in the wing of the synagogue. There's the distant sound of voices somewhere else in the building, what sounds like the events coordinator, Terry, talking with an unknown man. Josh sits up slowly, and Toby shifts, until they sit side by side on the bench, across from an ancient kiddush cup and shabbat candlesticks that once belonged to a donor's great-great grandparents.

"I don't…" Josh's voice is loud in the narrow hall, echoing slightly under the high ceiling. "I don't know how to do this without him."

"He showed you what's next, Josh," Toby says, voice barely louder than a breath. "All you have to do is follow his lead, and trust he knows we've got it from here."


End file.
